Barbizon School (1800-1880's): A group of Naturalist plein air painters who worked in the countryside surrounding the French town of Barbizon, south of Paris.
The Barbizon naturalists rejected Academic conventions in an attempt to achieve a truer representation of life based on nature rather than idealized imagery -- the Barbizon School is part of the French Realist movement known as Naturalism.
Theodore Rousseau is the best-known member of the Barbizon painters. Other prominent members included Constant Troyon and Charles-Francois Daubigny.
Realist painters Jean-Francois Millet and Camille Corot are very loosely associated with this school, although Millet iapparently followed the Academic tradiiton and painted images of the countryside in the studio rather than plein air.
The Barbizon School artists were the forerunners of the Impressionists.
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